


how to (un)steal art

by Fiction_is_the_Truth



Category: Despicable Me (Movies)
Genre: Art Heists, Edith as the life of the party (explosions included), Edith is Tony Stark, Gen, Heists, Margo as Certified Genius, Margo only joined to do damage control but Edith won her over eventually, Maybe OOC, Starring - Freeform, The Girls start their journey to becoming super villains, and Agnes as Unicorn Girl, and Agnes is Iron Man, and that’s not good for you, canon through end of first despicable me movie, just some girls having a chaotic good time, probably don’t take this completely seriously, unstealing art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiction_is_the_Truth/pseuds/Fiction_is_the_Truth
Summary: “We could steal the moon? Like Gru did?”“What? No!”“Yeah, Margo’s right, we can’t steal the moon. Like you said, Gru’s already done that!”“For various reasons, one of which being that it’d drastically mess up life on Earth, and that that’d shrink ray thing isn’t permanent.”“I bet I could build a better one!”“Please don’t, at least not yet.”“At least not yet, she says,”Agnes frowns. “Well, if we’re going to steal something, it has to be cool.”
Relationships: Edith/Explosions, Margo & Edith & Agnes
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	how to (un)steal art

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea like two days ago, and just had to write something. 
> 
> I’m not following really true characterization, I watched these movies ages ago, and had an idea and now I’m just vibing. Set shortly after the first Despicable Me.
> 
> I’m really sorry for those following my pjo/kane chronicles series, but writing’s hard and I’m terrible with sticking to dates. It will be out some time hopefully soon, and idk about a part 3, but part 2 will come. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Like many of the times that they got in trouble, Edith is the one who started it. Or, more specifically, a  _ bored _ Edith. 

After a few years of being the only one who’s  _ really  _ wrangling her sisters, Margo is used to being the one who’s always finding stuff for Edith to do to keep herself occupied. Agnes can handle herself pretty well, especially with her giant stuffed unicorn “Fluffy”, but Edith needs stuff to do, and Margo has tried almost everything. Craft projects, puzzles, various assortments of video games, robotic kits— _ everything. _

Seriously, at the end there, she’d been getting desperate. Edith plus buildable electronics equals explosions at least 80% of the time.

Although, since they were adopted by Gru, the last one has been less of an issue. If anything, the last time Edith blew something up, the  _ first time _ since they left Miss Hattie’s, he had seemed pleased, and slightly shocked, before encouraging her to conduct any more ‘mechanical feats’ in the lab with Dr. Nefario, who somehow decided to take Edith under his wing and show her how to make even  _ bigger _ explosions. 

Margo had traded a somewhat alarmed glance with Gru at that. Dave, one of the many minions that worked with their new father, had seemed all too excited at the prospect, almost as much as Edith herself. 

On that note, Dave is not allowed to loan Edith his rocket launcher. Ever. 

In the weeks since, their plan seemed to have worked. Edith had stopped poking everything in the lab, once she learned what did what and which gadgets did the coolest things, and overall had mellowed out slightly, with the constant option to go and destroy random junk to her heart’s content as a way to occupy time, even if she does have a slightly singed look much of the time.

Margo despaired of the day that Edith succeeds in actually building a gadget capable of large explosions. So far, the largest  _ stable _ thing that she’s built is a small mechanical unicorn for Agnes that shoots harmless lasers from its eyes.

She has suspicions that Edith has taken Agnes suggestion of ‘A GIANT UNICORN!’ for what she should attempt to build next to try and create what looks vaguely like a six year old sized unicorn themed Iron Man suit.

Yet, today is the one day in ages that Edith finds herself bored while Dr. Nefario is away. Gru, Margo will admit, if just to herself, that she’s not quite ready to call him ‘Dad’ yet, is off dealing with something with the minions, which had sounded rather serious if the group had not been able to resolve it themselves. So, no adults able to supervise.

Dave does not count. See the point about his rocket launcher.

Margo and Agnes had been sitting at the kitchen table, peacefully coloring, Agnes a fairy tale scene and herself a seek and find, when Edith walks in, groans, and thumps her head down on the table.

“I  _ need  _ something to do!” Edith’s voice is muffled by the table. “I feel like  _ I  _ am what’s going to explode!”

It’s relatively silent for a few minutes, with the scribbling of colored pencils and the low drone of Edith groaning into the tabletop, until Agnes’ pencils stop.

Both of them look up at her, Margo pushing up her glasses and Edith ignoring her hat which is in severe danger of falling off her head. Agnes blinks, a bit startled by the intense focus on her but pushes on.

“We could steal the moon? Like Gru did?”

“What? No!” Margo surprises herself with that, partially for saying something, and partially for not saying  _ more _ . They don’t really talk about the whole mess with Vector, except for right after when they were making sure everyone was okay and Gru apologizing for getting them involved. Which, yeah, makes sense, but as far as evil schemes go, Margo is not going to complain much. She  _ did _ get a pretty cool family out of it, and isn’t too worked up about it since everything did end alright. 

And well, after everything that went down at Miss Hattie’s, and what happened before, especially to their parents, she isn’t a huge fan of the law, law enforcement or otherwise, at the moment.

She shakes herself out of the shock just in time to be stunned by Edith actually agreeing with her.

“Yeah, Margo’s right, we can’t steal the moon. Like you said, Gru’s already done that!”

_ And  _ there’s the other shoe. 

“For various reasons,” Margo sighes, and rubs her temples, “One of which being that it’d drastically mess up life on Earth, and that that’d shrink ray thing isn’t permanent.”

“I bet  _ I  _ could build a better one!” Edith boasts.

“Please don’t, at least not yet.”

“At least not yet, she says,” Edith mock whispers to Agnes, who was looking a bit crestfallen after the vehement denial of her original suggestion, and grins.

Agnes frowns. “Well, if we’re going to steal something, it has to be  _ cool _ .”

“Are we going to steal something tho—”

Margo is abruptly cut off by Edith, who jumps up and slams her hands down onto the table.

“Let’s steal the Mona Lisa!”

“Yeah!” And now Margo is the one groaning with her head on the table.

“I see no way to convince you otherwise, because if I tried, you’d just rope Dave, Kevin, and Stuart into it.” She mumbles this, not meaning the other two to hear her, but evidently fails as the cheering falls silent.

“Does that mean we’re gonna do this?” Edith asks her questioningly, and somehow giddy, because she knows that Margo is completely right about Dave, Kevin, and Stuart, and that there’s no way out of it now. 

Margo sits up, pushes her glasses up on her nose, and attempts to look sternly at Edith and Agnes. “We will  _ put it back afterwards. _ There’s less risk of being caught that way.”

Edith moans dispiritedly. “But we need proof that we actually did it! It’s not true otherwise!”

“We can take a picture with it in the house. And the pictures  _ can’t leave the house, got it?” _

Edith ponders that, before shrugging, so Margo assumes that will be a good game plan, until she dramatically perks up. “We could send a picture to Gru’s mean boss!”

Agnes jumps up, just as excited as Edith is with the prospect of  _ planning  _ something new. “Yeah!”

“Alright, fine.”

The two jump around, and Margo has to agree that their attitude is infectious. She finds herself getting excited, despite all the challenges involved, but then again, that was half the reason behind why she graduated online highschool so early, it was  _ boring and she needed something challenging. _

Both Edith and Agnes attend the normal public school, and Gru offered to set her up at the local high school, but she’d told him that she was fine with her online program. She just hasn’t told him that it’s actually college courses. Yet. 

Agnes’ cheers fall silent a few minutes later. “But we need money, Gru needed money for that rocket. And we can’t just ask the minions for stuff, that’s mean.”

“Uh, I have a giant scrap pile, and Dr. Nefario will agree to pretty much anything. “Furthers the creative spirit and grows the youthful soul!” or something like that.” Edith swipes a large empty sketchpad, flips to a random page, and starts plotting out gadgets that Margo will insist she test beforehand in the months to come. “We have everything we need.”

And that’s how they ended up stealing the Mona Lisa.

* * *

They don’t start with the Mona Lisa of course, but with slightly less famous paintings, in order to build up some skill. And every time, once they get back home, Stuart takes a picture of the three of them with the painting on a Polaroid, the picture goes up on their “SUCCESSFUL SCHEMES!” board (Margo had  _ no  _ input on the name), and the next day the painting mysteriously appears right where it had always been, much to the shock of the museum and various security personnel.

Of course, they first go after much less famous works as practice. For once Edith and Margo had been in perfect agreement, but those didn’t really count. 

Then comes the actually famous paintings.

The first one is a Monet, and then an already stolen Rembrant, which Margo had insisted was currently overkill, but Edith had vehemently disagreed, on the terms that Margo had been the one to find it, in an abandoned warehouse in Sweden after copious amounts of hacking. She’s working on a degree in what’s technically computer science.

They kept that one actually, put it up in the stuffy gallery upstairs. The Rembrant, “Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee”, had been stolen since 1990. They’ll donate the original to a museum, the Louvre probably, once the minions are finished with the reproductions.

Then came a Picasso, then the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, then a few by Da Vinci, and countless more until their board is full, with just enough space for one more picture.

How they actually steal the Mona Lisa doesn’t really matter, but Edith cackles like a witch when her various gadgets actually function properly. Only two blew up, and were brave sacrifices for the cause.

Much to Margo’s surprise, Gru doesn’t actually figure out what they’re doing until the three of them are rolling the (carefully wrapped) painting out of Edith’s surprisingly functional and  _ very  _ fast Super-Powered-Sonic-Speed Stealth Helicopter. Dr. Nefario had known all along, or at least suspected, as he had helped Edith build the Helicopter, suggested many of the special features, and had told her to “Put it to good use.” which was probably a ringing endorsement.

Gru stares in surprise for a minute, catalogues the clear bubble wrap over what is obviously the carefully protected Mona Lisa, Agnes in her unicorn themed Iron Man replica, and the Helicopter flickering in and out of stealth mode (it can literally be invisible) and the giant stylized logo on the side, which Edith insisted they have as a signature, which was left on a blank business card at each location of the stolen paintings. INTERPOL is currently under the impression that the thief is someone calling themselves MAE, even if all security cameras only show nothing until the painting has been stolen. 

Margo’s particularly proud of that little bit of code.

“So you three  _ are _ the ones responsible! I have to admit, I suspected, I suspected!” Gru picks up Agnes and swings her around, only to set her down a few seconds later. “Ooh! That’s very heavy!”

Agnes laughs and pushes a button on the inside of her suit, the helmet retracting until she looks more like a little girl in a unicorn costume and less a walking, talking Fluffy the unicorn.

“YEAH!” Edith pokes her head out of the Helicopter as it finally stops flickering. “THAT  _ WAS _ US. YOU CAN SEE WHY MARGO DIDN’T WANT ME BORED, BUT AGNES AND I ROPED HER INTO IT EVENTUALLY!”

Margo shrugs. “Well, overall, there’s now harm done, we’ve been taking the paintings back, and I actually found a lost Rembrant, and we’re going to donate it to some famous museum once Ben and Jerry are done with the reproductions, so it’s pretty tame as far as art thievery goes.”

Dr. Nefario comes over, still on the same scooter, which he has refused to let Edith modify in any way. He glances over the finished Helicopter and the Mona Lisa on the trolley that Margo’s pushing and nods decisively. “Excellent. An early start to the Family Business is alway a benefit.”

Margo turns red as Dr. Nefario high-fives Edith, who’s doing what looks to be a victory dance.

Gru slaps a hand over his eyes as minions begin to swarm them, climbing onto the Helicopter and wheeling the Mona Lisa off to  _ somewhere _ where it should be safe. “Dr. Nefario! You’re not legally a part of the Family!”

“Not legally, no!” Dr. Nefario calls back, unperturbed by Edith’s attempts to drive his scooter while doing a handstand on the handlebars. “But since when is anything we do legal!”

(Margo later learns along with Edith and Agnes that their series of successful art heists - and subsequent returns - without being caught, counted as their formal induction to the Family, as Gru, Dr. Nefario, and Marlena Gru call it, which is the long, long line of successful criminals, thieves, pirates, and general chaos-creators and havoc-makers of the Gru family.)

(She also later hears Dr. Nefario telling Gru that their successful heists and the mysterious returns of the art pieces have stunned experts everywhere, especially with no hint of the culprits to be found, especially as it appears they returned all works unharmed and without a trail to follow, might make it the crime of the century. Margo’s not sure how to feel about this yet.)

* * *

A few days later, once the Mona Lisa is back in it’s secure museum setting, Gru’s mother calls and proclaims that they’re her favorite grandchildren, nevermind that the three of them are her  _ only  _ grandkids.

A week after that, Edith stands on top of the breakfast table, accidentally kicks Dave in the face and off the table, and proclaims that since their “SUCCESSFUL SCHEMES” board is now full that they need a new one and should fill it with something interesting like exposing government secrets or their preparations to start a floating colony-city on Venus. 

Her reasoning is that Mars is boring and also taken (BY THE GOVERNMENT!), and that Venus has  _ acid rain _ which is super cool and coolness is always a factor that must be considered.

Margo would be less worried if she didn’t know that Edith had already started floating space city plans or that she made those plans while cackling on the phone with Marlena “Call me Granny, dearie!” Gru. 

**Author's Note:**

> My sole inspiration was ‘what if the girls from despicable me became supervillains’ and then I came up with the conversation about stealing the moon. I hope you enjoyed this, please tell me what you think.


End file.
